MELBOURNE, Australia — Coco Gauff is out of the Australian Open.
On a hot, sun-drenched Rod Laver Arena day that looked tailored to her strengths, and in a matchup when she is the Grand Slam veteran, Gauff lost to Paula Badosa of Spain. Badosa, who returned from a potentially career-ending injury at this year’s Wimbledon, pulled off the biggest Grand Slam win of her career, beating the 20-year-old American 7-5, 6-4.
“A lot more work to do,” she said about an hour after it was over. “I’m obviously disappointed but I’m not completely crushed.”
For Gauff, that in itself was something of a victory. Her losses at last year’s majors, especially the fourth-round defeats to Emma Navarro at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, left her shaken. After the U.S. Open she parted ways with one of her coaches, Brad Gilbert, and added another one, Matt Daly, who could make technical changes in how she holds the racket.
She also tried to adopt a new attitude, reminding herself that tennis matches are not life and death and that losing, which even the best players do sometimes, is just a part of the journey.
“Some matches are going to go my way, some are not,” Gauff said. “It’s one of those things that maybe a couple of years ago I would feel a lot more crushed and feel like the world is ending type sadness. Now I think it’s just disappointed that I could have done a little bit better in some areas.”
Gauff fell victim to her once-again shaky forehand, but also to an emboldened Badosa, who followed the aggressive approach that Gauff’s opponents have employed over the past 10 days and four, now five matches.
After three months of watching Gauff going on the attack to win nearly every match and tournament that she played, her rivals have started to realize that they can no longer rely on Gauff’s weaknesses beating herself. They have to attack her before she attacks them.
Badosa said that was her plan after her fourth-round match. That was the easy part; she did the hard part too and executed it. Badosa seized on every shortish ball — and plenty that were not so short — and hoped that enough of them would hit their targets. Gauff tried to meet Badosa’s power with her own and they played like two prizefighters, with no interest in dancing around each other. They just wanted to swing out.
Gauff looked like she was going to put Badosa on the ropes midway through the first set, but she never earned a break point and by the end of the set the once-weak forehand, that had been mostly stable the last few months after she adjusted her approach, was beginning to wilt under Badosa’s pressure.
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The match turned with Gauff serving at 5-5 in the first set, as Badosa and Gauff played the best point of the match, with Gauff chasing down Badosa’s attacks and Badosa earning her opening with a nifty half-volley off what looked like a sure passing shot from Gauff. A soft drop volley had the American clapping for her and two more bold forehands on the next point gave her the break before she served out the set.
Gauff, who left the court after the first set, looked like she might make a surge early in the second. After losing her first service game, she broke back and tied the set at two games all, but with the error big still biting her she relinquished her serve again and went down 5-2.
Badosa entered this quarterfinal with scar tissue she has been trying to heal ever since returning to tennis. In the last eight of the 2024 U.S. Open against Emma Navarro, she had a 5-1 lead in the second set having lost the first. She lost six games in a row and said, Rafael-Nadal style, that she had “done a disaster.” Even Navarro said she didn’t believe a third set was coming when she couldn’t afford to lose another game.
“I came in, I wanted to play my best game. I think I did it,” Badosa said on court.
”A year ago I was here with my back and didn’t know if I would have to retire from this sport,” she said.
Badosa had once been the world No. 2, and had won the WTA 1000 tournament at Indian Wells, Calif. 12 months ago in Melbourne, the back injury, a stress fracture in her lower spine, seemed like it might be too much to overcome.
Through last season she balanced rehabilitation with match play never knowing how far her back might take her. She had a series of cortisone injections, suggested by doctors as a last resort, that had little effect at first. She made that U.S. Open quarterfinal. She lost it. Another quarterfinal loss at the French Open in 2021, where she fell just short losing 8-6 in a third set, lingered too.
Badosa said she was plenty nervous trying to serve out the match, especially since she had lost from a set and a break up against Gauff in China in October. She told herself that if she served well, she was going to have a decent chance at getting over the line.
“Just try to focus on yourself, toss the ball correctly, do all the techniques,” she said.
“I stopped thinking a little bit of Coco and the match and the entire atmosphere, and I was with myself.”
The scar tissue still showed before that final game, first in a missed drive volley on top of the net from which she escaped. It showed again as she tried to serve out the match for the first time at 5-2. Gauff grabbed the game and served at 3-5 down. Then, she stole a point she should have lost when Badosa smacked an overhead right to her racket. before holding to put the pressure back on the Spaniard.
This time, Badosa withstood it. She pounded two aces and allowed Gauff to grab just a single point in the final game. When it was over she dropped to her knees, then headed to the net where a disappointed Gauff awaited. The demons from New York had been exorcized.
When it was over, the numbers told the story. Gauff had six double faults and 35 unforced errors on her groundstrokes. Badosa had just two double faults and 20 unforced errors from the ground; she forced 22 errors out of Gauff, compared to 17.
Gauff said she felt that at the U.S. Open she was playing without any solutions for solving her problem. She felt stagnant, or even headed backwards.
Now, she said, she knows what she needs to work on and how to do it. Her serve and forehand are not finished, but she has seen enough improvement to feel as though she is on the right path.
“So I want to continue working on that, continue working on playing aggressive,” she said. “Even though I lost today, I feel like I’m in on an upward trajectory.
She can take some more solace in moving one round further than she did the last two Grand Slams. But since winning the WTA Tour Finals in November, she doesn’t play Grand Slams to make quarterfinals. She arrives planning to be alive in the final weekend. She will have to wait for for the French Open in May to have another shot at that.
Before then, she will have the chance to prove that her remarkable winning streak of 22-2 between the U.S. Open and this defeat is sustainable progress, rather than another masterful overcoming of a fundamental problem still in need of a sound fix.
(Top photo: Getty Images)
